Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

Court because of a phoenetic error.
    ‘Hugging on his Woman Love,’ because of all the moaning and panting, was mistaken for another word.
    In keeping with the name of the chipper, Edith Piaf was playing on the jukebox—‘Les Trois Cloches’ (Three Bells. Little Jimmy Brown. In the valley the bells are ringing).
    Outside the Magnet Cinema a Teddy boy with floral-design cuffs was combing his hair with a metal comb.
    A Marlborough Street magistrate, sentencing three Teddy boys for assault, had recently declared that their drainpipe trousers were a pity, because it made them difficult to pull down and give the boys a hiding.
    In Dublin Street, Monaghan town, Gavan Duffy had been inspired by James Clarence Mangan’s translations from medieval Irish.
    In famine-striken Ireland state prisoners of Kilmainham Gaol subscribed three shillings and ten pence to Mangan when he descended into destitution.
    Swans in the swamps of Virginia.
    There were many swans in Monaghan because of all the lakes. Each lake with a narrative. Even the Convent Lake in Monaghan town had a narrative because there was a crannóg in it—a man-made island, a lake dwelling.
    In the Pearse column, in squaddie’s denims, with blackened face, Seán South’s every order was given in Irish, then translated by him on the way to Brookeborough in a stolen council truck with tipper, which Sten guns would not penetrate, through lake countryside, through Scots pine— giúis Albanach —countryside.
    He’d visited Patrick Pearse’s cottage in Connemara, August 1954, and in his last hours he proclaimed about establishing Northern Ireland—where people watched Dixon of Dock Green on television, X-certificate films in the cinema, and listened to Mrs Dale’s Diary and The Archers on radio—as a gaeltacht (Irish-speaking region).
    At Brookeborough police station out rushed the assailants with a mine. Juice turned on.
    Nothing happened.
    A second installed. Failed.
    Attempt to lob hand grenades through the barracks windows.
    The previous year Seán South had visited many RUC barracks along the border to assess armaments. In Brookeborough he’d seen only pistols and Sten guns in the RUC arsenal, which was on open display.
    A Bren gun was kept in married quarters upstairs.
    An RUC sergeant opened fire with this Bren.
    Seán South stayed by the Pearse column Bren until they riddled him.
    He’d emptied three magazines into the barracks.
    Small Fergal, as the Pearse column called him—he was five-foot, six-inches—was shot in the back and thighs.
    The RUC Bren burst through the right door, roof, floor of stolen council truck. Tipper kept rising.
    Bullet caught driver’s foot.
    Lights of a police patrol car down the road on their left as they made a getaway.
    When the police patrol car was one hundred yards from them it opened fire.
    At Altwark Cross, between Brookeborough and Rosslea, they stopped at a farmhouse.
    Two Pearse column men went to the door. Knocked.
    No reply.
    One got in through the back. In the kitchen was a picture of the Sacred Heart.
    They brought Seán and Fergal to an outhouse where a light was on. Under the light an act of contrition was whispered in Seán’s ear.
    Wounded column commander volunteered to stay.
    Second-in-command ordered him away.
    Fergal, Seán, truck abandoned.
    But people in a nearby farmhouse, where there were Stygian greyhounds, asked to get a priest and doctor.
    Police and B-Specials shot up farmhouse and outhouse.
    Fergal died in a last burst of fire. Bled to death from a wounded thigh.
    Since my love died for me today,
I’ll die for him tomorrow.

    Bren guns were mounted on the wall of Fermanagh County Hospital, Enniskillen, where the inquest was told that Seán South’s head was bruised and discoloured.
    Six survivors carried four wounded across Slieve Beagh.
    Frequently they were forced to lie down because of the lights and flares. A compass guided them.
    The bittern laid out like the ruin of Troy; hair turned white that night like the Arctic hare or the mountain hare of Europe in winter.
    CinemaScope—letterbox screen—launched with The Robe starring Victor Mature and Jean Simmons, distorted faces, squeezed them.
    Panavision improved this.
    That night was in Panavision.

The House of Mourning

    A stored digital photograph on a mobile phone; boy, tall, in off-white tank top, hair newly dyed, olive-gold, against the Shannon estuary in north Kerry, sea rocks shaped like manatees on which occasional blue